12/10/2009

Cincinnati Coach Brian Kelly has been named the head football coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish:

“Notre Dame has settled on Brian Kelly as the man who can restore its faded glory, just as he turned Cincinnati into a national title contender.

He’s leaving behind an undefeated and upset Cincinnati team that didn’t seem prepared to lose him despite rampant speculation that the job was his.”

This is tough news for the bowl-bound Cincinnati Bearcats, especially since the news broke on the same night as the team’s annual football banquet:

“The team held its annual football banquet at a downtown hotel on Thursday night. As players arrived for what was supposed to be a night of celebration, they were greeted by camera crews and reporters asking about Kelly’s decision to leave Cincinnati for Notre Dame.

Three hours later, players were told to gather in a meeting room so Kelly could share the news that most already knew.

One minute into the meeting, the door opened and Gilyard walked out angry and alone, save his MVP trophy. His teammates soon followed, some with teary eyes. They had a difficult time accepting that Kelly was leaving one of the nation’s top teams before its biggest bowl game.

“We already knew what he was going to say. We weren’t giving him a round of applause or anything,” tight end Ben Guidugli said. “It’s like somebody turned their back on us. We brought this whole thing this far. We’ve come this far. To have someone walk out now is disappointing.”

Kelly’s statements leading up to a title-clinching win over Pittsburgh last Saturday made it harder to accept.

“The Tuesday when we were practicing for Pittsburgh, he said he loves it here and he loves this team and loves coaching here and his family loves it here,” quarterback Tony Pike said.

Notre Dame was one of the few jobs Kelly has always coveted. Guidugli said Kelly thanked the players for making the move possible by doing so well on the field.”

I guess this is good for Kelly but that’s a harsh way to treat his current team.

Adding to his already large and influential stable of internet websites, Andrew Breitbart announced today the January 2010 debut of Big Journalism:

“Big Journalism will be run by former Time Magazine staffer Michael Walsh, who is also a former journalism professor and film & television professor at Boston University. Walsh and Breitbart met at a casual gathering of like-minded people and hit it off. When Breitbart made the decision to launch a new site covering journalism, he says that Walsh was first person that came to his mind. The fact that Walsh is a media veteran going back to the early 70s didn’t hurt, he said.

Walsh and Breitbart share a similar distaste for the day-to-day work of “institutional journalists.” In an interview, the new editor of Big Journalism boiled down the mission of the site thusly: “Our goal at Big Journalism is to hold the mainstream media’s feet to the fire. There are a lot of stories that they simply don’t cover, either because it doesn’t fit their world view, or because they’re literally innocent of any knowledge that the story even exists, or because they are a dying organization, short-staffed, and thus can’t cover stuff like they did before.”

“Big Journalism will be the go-to site for solidly backed-up stories, sharp points of view, and really great writing,” he said. “We are defenders of the First Amendment and resolute enemies of political correctness. That’s the key to the site’s philosophy.”

In addition, Breitbart plans other reporting and blogging websites including Big Education, Big Tolerance, Big Jerusalem, and Big Peace. He discusses the goals of those websites here. I’m looking forward to Big Education.

“Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.

An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down.”

There’s no good time to lose a job but this strikes me as a particularly bad time, especially for those in the media. I really feel for these people but it’s not surprising to see media businesses fail as other American businesses are also going under.

H/T Matador, with my thanks.

— DRJ

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I don’t regularly read E&P, but everything I have ever read there has been dishonest. No tears here.

President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today in Oslo, Norway. The Prize was awarded for Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

“President Barack Obama entered the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize winners Thursday with humble words, acknowledging his own few accomplishments while delivering a robust defense of war and promising to use the prestigious award to “reach for the world that ought to be.”

A wartime president honored for peace, Obama became the first sitting U.S. president in 90 years and the third ever to win the prize – some say prematurely. In this damp, chilly Nordic capital to pick it up, he and his wife, Michelle, whirled through a day filled with Nobel pomp and ceremony.

And yet Obama was staying here only about 24 hours, skipping a slew of Nobel activities. This miffed some in Norway but reflects a White House that sees little value in extra pictures of the president, his poll numbers dropping at home, taking an overseas victory lap while thousands of U.S. troops prepare to go off to war and millions of Americans remain jobless.”

To me, the cost of leadership weighs heaviest in these words — words I agree with — that must have been very hard for a liberal to speak and for his anti-war supporters to hear:

“Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on the use and prevention of war. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks – at about 4,000 words – were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address.

In them, Obama refused to renounce war for his nation or under his leadership, saying defiantly that “I face the world as it is” and that he is obliged to protect and defend the United States.

“A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms,” Obama said. “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is a recognition of history.”

It’s not easy to be President in good times but it’s very hard to be President in bad times.

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